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Equipment Access As Definitive CharacteristicA major issue, which has only been touched on so far, is that of how the teachers asserted or did not assert their power by constraining students’ access to equipment. In Schofield and Davidson's study of internet use, “teachers adopted strategies of surveillance, limited movement to bookmarks and lists of acceptable search terms, and us[ed], or claim[ed] to use, technical means to monitor the Internet sites students visited to help control student behavior” (2003, p. 67). The issues with video are not entirely the same: They do not worry about access to uncensored materials, though a couple of male students were described as being foolish enough to record under a girl’s shirt and to then bring the videotape back to an infuriated teacher. I expected that the issue of permissions would arise—getting people’s permission to be recorded—but it did not. 14 Instead, the only constraints that video production elicited from teachers were about the availability and protection of equipment. The availability of equipment was a problem at each school, but at Boarding High, there was little to be done about it. Once, one of the four cameras did not have a charged battery, forcing one camera to stay where it could be plugged in. The resolution was simply to take turns leaving the classroom. When iBooks were not available, students simply did not work, leading some students to never finish their projects. The courses were over before solutions could be considered, but at the other two schools, the issue necessitated resolution. At Suburban High, five cameras and a sign-up sheet easily prevented conflict in camera use, but the teacher intervened when students had signed up for more editing time than they were allotted, freeing up the computer for other students but leading to a poor editing job for that group of students. Urban High rarely had a conflict over equipment availability, but access to cameras was generally reserved as a reward for completing the planning phase, and access was limited to the Hi-8 camcorders for Media 1 students. Only the Media 1 teacher allowed students to take cameras home. Thus in practice Urban students had the least access to equipment, and Urban teachers were the most constraining in this respect. Theft and damage of equipment was a concern expressed and realized at both Urban and Suburban Highs but not at Boarding. Theft and damage are real problems that every school faces in one way or another. A teacher of another program spoke about how disheartening it was to have a camera stolen and how fully it prevented editing in his classes, it being their only digital camera. The camera that was stolen from Suburban High did not stop work because it was one of five S-VHS cameras, but the teacher complained to his students that the worst part was that it had to be one of them—someone who had been given access to the keys—who had done it. This in itself was an indication of the level of solidarity achieved in the program—that students as well as the teacher expressed a sense of betrayal. But funding was a problem: The program used club money to replace the camera. Most of Suburban High’s equipment was purchased through the Regional Occupation Program (ROP), which another teacher said had gone bankrupt. The teacher also worked hard to find small grants and good deals. At Urban High, the bigger problem was that students kept damaging equipment, and their funding was gone. The plans to transform the “New Media Academy” into an ROP program may have been in part to solve financial problems. Despite having similar financial concerns, however, the two schools took very different approaches to solutions. At Suburban High, the appropriate use of equipment was routinely promoted. The teacher had students prove they could handle a camera and had them pass a safety quiz (particularly important for work in the theater) before they were allowed to use any equipment. He spoke often about protecting the equipment, joking frequently that it was more important to protect the equipment than the students, but he did not impose constraint on student access. A sign with a similarly humorous message about safety and protecting equipment hung on the door to the control room. And students in the advanced class were assigned to doing small repairs. Promotions thus dominated while constraints were used to protect equipment from non-members of the community: The equipment was locked in the classroom when it was not being used, but the teacher regularly gave students access to his keys and permitted them to go back to the storage closet, which often remained unlocked. Community membership was an important part of protecting equipment. By contrast, Urban High teachers promoted safe use of equipment mostly with threats such as “You will have to pay for it!” But they imposed more constraints to prevent theft: Only the teachers were allowed in the closet where equipment was stored, and the closet remained locked at all times. The Media 3 teacher in particular spoke about the problems, doing so in front of students and adding to an atmosphere of distrust. He believed that if there was only one teacher using the equipment at a time, that they would be able to prevent damage because they could track who was using what. He also spoke longingly of a school in which students had to provide their own cameras. Once he reported finding one of the doors tampered with so that it would not lock but discovering it before anything was taken. In general, he spoke about things being stolen quite often, but never said specifically what had been stolen. The other two teachers did not speak about it in my presence, but all Urban teachers imposed constraint on who could use cameras and under what circumstances. Attempts to protect video equipment from theft and damage and to assure student access to it are consistent with the general teacher-student relations. At Boarding High, access was constrained by unknown others and a distinct lack of time. No attention to promoting proper use of equipment was observed. Instead, students were given broad freedoms by program staff to do what they wanted with only rare constraints or promotions. At Suburban High, promotions dominated, and a community emerged that reinforced his efforts. The Urban High program offered few prompts and little guidance, but teachers sought to constrain students’ activities, trusting in an abstract desire for success or grades to help students focus on producing videos. This dependence on constraint despite its lack of success can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the intended reforms, which in turn seems to be a reflection of problems deeply rooted in the school. |
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14At
Suburban High, all students in Television Production classes had to
sign a release forms at the beginning of the year, but others were
never asked for such formalities. |
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